I just had drilled and slotted rotors installed on my SS. They look great, but they don't stop as well as the OEM ones. I am thinking of getting some of the ceramic brake pads installed. Does anybody know if this will help? Thanks!

Try this, tear everything back down and pull off the pads and rotors. Get some emery cloth (fine works best cause your not trying to remove much) and buff your pads just enough to knock off the glazed look. Then buff your rotors too (front and back). Put it all back together and drive it get up to about 30 and stop normally sit at a stop for about 30 seconds (do this 5+ times) then do a few harder stops(3-5) from alittle higher speed(40-50). Always allow about 30 seconds between stops. That should help

side note, did you disconnect the brake line from the caliper at anytime? If so please bleed the brakes before you do any more driving.

P.S. as 2ndgen said you probably wont like ceramics they need to be way to hot to "really work"

Ok, thanks so much for all the advice. They are 2 weeks old. I didn't do them myself. A shop did it and they painted my calipers at the same time. They did not take the calipers off. Everything looks like it's on correctly. Maybe I need to give them some more time to break in? It's been a couple hundred miles so far.

Ok, thanks so much for all the advice. They are 2 weeks old. I didn't do them myself. A shop did it and they painted my calipers at the same time. They did not take the calipers off. Everything looks like it's on correctly. Maybe I need to give them some more time to break in? It's been a couple hundred miles so far.

That sounds goofy, how do ya do all that without removing the rotors?

And / or maybe while painting stuff got on the rotors, they didn't clean it off well.

Id ride the brakes some but at low speeds so it just break the surface if maybe its over spray, I do that after a long sit to break the rust off that forms.

if its been a couple hundred miles you are well beyond break in for brakes. They should have pulled your calipers off to paint them. I would take your car back to the same shop and have them rebleed your brakes and make sure they do it at no charge (their mistake) or do the cleaning I mentioned above but more than likely they didn't bleed it correctly/completely

I just did a total break overhaul on mine last week. I have dimpled and slotted disks, hawk ceramic pads and goodrige stainless g-stop lines with motul rbf 600 fluid.

First the brakes should work comparably at first without "Burnishing" also refered to as "Seating", "Seasoning", etc. My ceramics needed no "heating up" to work well. I did burnish them shortly after putting them all in. This process is 5-6 HARD stops from 55-60 MPH to 5-10 MPH. This heats up the rotors and transfers some of the ceramic pad onto the rotors. Once done it is a one time per lifetime of the bad deal. Make sure you don't come to a complete stop though, you do not want to warp the rotors thus down to 5-10 MPH so the rotors are still turning. I did this and they have much better stopping power than the OEM in my opinion. Some of this will be due to the break lines too.

I agree with one reader here that said to have your lines checked again i.e. bleeding them properly. Most issues with poor stopping is not due to teh pad or the rotors but teh bleeding of the lines. If they feel "mushy" it is most likely air in your line. The key to this is to have a steady flow of fluid into a bottle without ever running he resevoir dry. If this happened it could be a bigger problem with air in your master celinoid (sp) or the ABS unit. Bottom line is you don't know if this happened if you didn't do it. I would recommend having the whole system purged by a competant shop. I would not want to wonder if they will stop me.

You should still Burnish your rotors adn pads once you have good stopping power again.

Ceramic pads are a common fix to reduce brake dust; quite common in street applications.

Correct. I don't know of any ceramic pads being used in racing. They just won't hold up to the heat. Basically, a "ceramic" pad is a semi-metallic pad compound to which at least 7% of "ceramic" material (usually beach sand) has been added. What you get as a result depends heavily on what compound was started with before doctoring, which is why you can't easily compare one brand of ceramics to another.

Normally, you give up 10-15% of stopping power going with a good ceramic pad over a good semi-metallic pad. And, normally, the dust given off is much lighter in color. But using garbage pads may yield all sorts of undesirable effects! I have found that getting a good deal on quality pads is great, but trying to save a bit more with the low-grade stuff is usually a big mistake.